Forgotten Golf Courses of Scotland: Lost Links Worth Knowing About

Scotland at its peak had over 600 golf courses. Today it has around 580. The gap in those numbers represents courses that were ploughed under, built over, requisitioned, or simply abandoned when the last member locked the door and nobody opened it again.

The history of Scotland's lost courses is partly the history of the twentieth century — wars, agricultural shifts, urban expansion, club finances that never recovered after 1939. Some of these courses are worth knowing about not because you can play them (you can't) but because the landscape still carries them, and understanding what used to be there changes how you see what's left.

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Gullane Hill's lost courses

At peak Victorian golf expansion, Gullane Hill supported five golf courses, not three. The two that disappeared were victims of club consolidation — members absorbed into the surviving three clubs, land reverted to common ground. If you walk the hill today, the traces of old fairways and bunker positions are still readable in the grassland.

What remains: The three surviving Gullane courses (No. 1, No. 2, No. 3) occupy essentially the same ground as the original five-course complex. The hill itself is one of the most golf-saturated pieces of land in the world — literally, because the underlying terrain has been shaped by generations of play.

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The First World War courses

During the First World War, several Scottish golf courses were requisitioned for military use. Some were returned; some were not.

Monifieth (Ashludie Course): The Monifieth Links complex runs two courses — the Medal and the Ashludie — and both survive. The Ashludie was requisitioned for military training and returned to civilian use after the war. It is still there, still 18 holes, and still the cheaper of the two: see Monifieth Ashludie.

Links north of Dundee: Several smaller links in the Broughty Ferry and Monifieth area were requisitioned and never fully restored. The land is now residential and commercial.

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The Second World War courses

The Second World War was more damaging than the First to Scotland's smaller golf courses. Courses were requisitioned for agriculture, military installations, and in some cases built over entirely during post-war construction.

Portobello Golf Club, Edinburgh: Not the surviving Portobello Municipal — this was a separate private club on the Portobello seafront. Closed during the war; the clubhouse was demolished for seaside development. The municipal course that now exists near the Portobello seafront is a different and much shorter layout.

Lossiemouth Moray Links (partial): The RAF Lossiemouth station, expanded significantly during the Second World War, absorbed part of the links ground that surrounded the Moray Golf Club. The current Old and New Courses are what remained after the military took what it needed.

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The Edinburgh courses that disappeared

Edinburgh once had more golf courses than it does now — a side effect of being Scotland's capital city and the home of several of the oldest golf societies.

Bruntsfield Links (original): The original common ground at Bruntsfield where golf was played from the late seventeenth century is still there — the Bruntsfield Links park — but the golf left when the terrain became too congested with players and the Bruntsfield Links Golfing Society moved to its current Barnton course in 1898. You can walk the old Bruntsfield Links today; it's a green space used for casual games and dog walking. Golf is still occasionally played informally on the Links, as it was for 300 years.

Leith Links (original): The other Edinburgh common ground where golf was definitively played from 1744 (when the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers formed and played for the first Silver Club). Leith Links is still a park, still a green space in Leith, and still the location where the first known written rules of golf were produced. No formal golf is played on it today. Worth a visit on any Edinburgh golf trip.

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How to find lost courses

For the serious golf historian, the following resources are useful:

Old Ordnance Survey maps: The National Library of Scotland's online map archive (nls.uk) has every Ordnance Survey map of Scotland from the 1890s onwards. Golf courses are marked; comparing historical maps to current satellite imagery reveals dozens of lost layouts.

Scottish Golf records: Scottish Golf (formerly the Scottish Golf Union) holds historical records of affiliated clubs.

Peter Crabtree's research: Golf historians and writers have documented many lost courses; Peter Crabtree's work on Scotland's early golf history is the most cited.

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For the history of St Andrews: How St Andrews Became the Home of Golf. For courses that are still open and underplayed: Scottish Highlands Golf: Hidden Gems for the Adventurous Golfer.